Super-soft and Super-elastic DNA Robot with Magnetically-driven Navigational Locomotion for Cell Delivery in Confined Space.

Soft organisms such as earthworms can access confined, narrow spaces, which inspire scientists to fabricate soft robots that are of great potential in intriguing applications such as in vivo manipulation of cells or tissues and minimally invasive surgery. Herein, we report a super-soft and super-elastic magnetic DNA hydrogel-based soft robot, namely DNA robot, which presents a shape-adaptive property and enables magnetically-driven navigational locomotion in confined and unstructured space. DNA hydrogel is designed with combinational dynamic and permanent crosslinking network via chain entanglement and DNA hybridization respectively; as a result, DNA hydrogel shows shear-thinning and cyclic strain properties. DNA robot completes a series of complex magnetically-driven navigational locomotion by adapting and recovering its shape, such as passing through narrow channels and pipes, entering grooves and itinerating in a maze. Remarkably, DNA robot successfully works as a vehicle to deliver cells in confined space by virtue of the 3D porous networked structure and great biocompatibility.

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